Ok. Philosophy to me: Dividing lines are difficult for me. I
   will start with personal history as that works best for me in
   unraveling my thoughts. I do not how to define Philosophy for
   me. I know the dictionary. We all have Google. I have trouble
   dividing the lines up. What's not philosophy? What is? I've
   received my philosophy (such as it is) from a variety of
   sources, some not at all directly related to Philosophy on the
   surface. I tend to be experiential and introspective. I love
   processing new information, watching myself as I process it, and
   see the new ideas as they form and then forming them, if they
   come together at all. The process. I love the process. To skip
   ahead and then go back: I avoided studying Philosophy for my
   adolescence and most of my adult life so far. I'm 43 years old -
   I'll be 44 in a few weeks (yay - although I liked 42 better,
   symbolic and all but 47 I think is prime so that'll be cool)
   After studying many OTHER things that are NOT Philosophy proper,
   as I understood Philosophy to be, I decided last year to embark
   on a journey to tackle this demon once and for all. I had
   Philosophy books. Intro to Philosophy stuff just sitting on a
   shelf that I never touched. I'd look at it with irritation. It
   wasn't m language. Not how I think. Not how I go about solving
   problems and understanding things. I'm experiential first and
   much of my input is emotive and THEN rationally processed using
   feelings as a guide. Sounds wonky but it's the best way I can
   describe it. But I decided to tackle it. How? In the way I do
   best: Join a group of people who are "into" the subject I want
   to learn and just dive right in and figure it out as I go along
   talking to people. So I joined several Philosophy groups here on
   Facebook. [I'd also done so n the past about 21 years ago, I
   recently discovered from VERY old postings I found, but I was
   more the kind that was producing what I considered Philosophical
   from me and NOT participating in the more academic side of
   things] Half a lifetime ago. Anyway... I joined. I participated.
   I'd hear names. I'd look them up. Youtube. Wikipedia. After a
   while, I'd dive into that Encyclopedia of Philosophy that
   everybody seems to like for more information as my knowledge
   increased. Meanwhile, I debated, argued, got a "feel" for "the
   people". I wanted to understand the psychology. The society. The
   "feel" for the community and the people in it and what 'types'
   they fell into and what scripts they were using. Took a while -
   about 9 months - before I was pretty satisfied. Once I was, I
   left most of the groups, kept one or two I think. So in that
   time what did I discover that most influenced me? Embodied
   Cognition worked best for me generally. George Lakoff. There's
   other families of similar notions but i realized they're all
   GENERALLY compatible but is the root for me, so I just say that
   one. I discovered I did not care for the Excluded middle. You
   see, I did not care for seeing binary logic in a different
   format. I was already well versed in it since I did programming
   since I was 11 on my little hooks-up-to-TV computer with BASIC
   and what not. In short, I learned logic by programming. Mastered
   its Excel form about 15 years ago in a systems analyst position.
   Nice thing about programming is is things have to compile. They
   HAVE to be logically consistent to run. No choice. So I wasn't
   impressed by seeing or making logically sound arguments,
   although I knew how to. Rather I just wanted to get to the
   bottom of things, via whatever methodology was best to use at
   the time. So, what I like about Embodied Cognition is it lessens
   the fictional barriers between mind, body, environment, society.
   They're all a part of the same system. Analogies are king, which
   I already knew for myself, and it was wonderful to see a decent
   theory I could actually stand behind. So that's where I am
   today. To get a deeper idea of my philosophy, I have to trace
   back much deeper, which I can also do. But I thought this would
   be an ok start. Apologies for not dong more name dropping but
   introductions like this are hard enough smile emoticon Also
   apologies for the already blurry lines. They will get blurrier
   should I continue from here. == I'll stop here for now but
   tomorrow, I could probably dredge up a list of philosophers that
   were influential or that I find myself learning towards over
   others, complete with good links. ==